Originally Posted by
Thulsadoom
I hate to say this, since I consider myself one of the more encouraging members of the touring forums, but I don't think that you realize the cumulative affect that fatigue will play on a long term tour. Even if you do regular fast centuries and even doubles and triples you won't know how your body will react to weeks and months of touring. There's a lot to do.
You ride all day, you have to set up camp, you have to find food, do laundry occasionally. There's bad weather, noisy nights, hills, bad roads, head/cross winds, you name it. You won't have your nice soft bed and regular lifestyle to retreat back into in order to recover.
One day, you're bound to wake up and feel like death. Everyones reserves have limits. You're liable to want a nice motel and a couple of days off, and that's when your time schedule and financial planning takes a tumble.
There has been some great advice posted in this thread, but I want to add a big "+1" to this one. Seriously, it's one thing to go out and ride a century (or even a double) and come home to a warm bed, but you're going to find things to be quite a bit different on tour. You'll be carrying a lot more equipment, and be setting up camp wherever you can find it, you'll soon learn the value of shortening a day and making sure you scope out your campsite *before* it gets dark. You'll have days where that campsite you saw on your map either doesn't exist or has been closed down and replaced with a big "No Camping" sign, meaning you'll have to ride another 30-odd km to a campsite (yes, this has happened to me more than once). And you want to ride 100 miles a day on top of all this?
Seriously, I'd suggest doing a tour somewhere for at least a few days just to get a feel for doing all that stuff, and learning how much it will all cost, of course. The other thing is to make sure you can access additional funds above and beyond what you budgeted on tour, in case of emergencies or other problems. Several times I have encountered unseasonal weather on tours which has made me spend more money than I intended. In Western Australia in 2009 it was unseasonally cold and wet, and a few times I decided to spring for more formal accommodation because I was sick of camping in it. Then in Japan last year I copped an unseasonal heatwave (interrupted only by a typhoon) which led to me spending more on drinks and ice creams than I had planned.
Again, I'm not trying to stop you, but I do think you need to do some more planning and some more touring before undertaking something like this.